Background
Cisco Systems, Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking equipment for the Internet, with over 20 years’ experience bringing Internet Protocol-based (IP) networking to business, education, government, and home networks.
Business problem
In 2008, Cisco’s Technical Support Services (TSS) team was looking to create a tool to help the sales organization calculate the value customers could achieve with Cisco’s SMARTnet support offerings. An important objective was to help sales reps sell on the basis of the value delivered by the program, rather than on the basis of price discounts.
Solution
Working closely with the TSS team, and starting with a draft model the team had developed in house, Callan Consulting developed a comprehensive spreadsheet describing the value provided by Cisco’s SMARTnet service offerings. The model is structured according to the various services provided as part of SMARTnet and can be used to estimate the value delivered by each of these services.
The model is prepopulated with quantifiable, real-world customer benchmarks, and can be tailored to accommodate different contract levels, industries, or countries covered with a click. A color-coded inputs page guides the user through the necessary information entry and the outputs page uses a combination of data tables and figures to provide an overview and detailed drill-down of the economic benefits provided.
Results
The TSS team has integrated the SMARTnet ROI tool into its ongoing sales processes, and sales teams immediately reported that the value calculations helped customers realize that SMARTnet service contracts were an appropriate and cost effective strategy for maintaining their networks. The client felt that the verifiable customer specific results added invaluable credibility to the results. TSS has subsequently come back to Callan Consulting to expand the model to cover additional service levels and incorporate new countries and industries covered.
“Ed provided the professional expertise and guidance to appropriately incorporate our customers’ service data into accurate measures of business cost savings. He then quickly created an interactive tool that is easy to use and provides results that are visually compelling and easy to understand.
Our sales teams are very excited about the customer specific value summary communicated by this tool. With the results, they can speak very specifically with their customer about how the customer benefits from their service contract.”
—Jackie Bayne
Business Development Manager, Technical Service Sales Support
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